The Safe Library

It hails a lot in Texas in the spring and early summer. Tonight in fact, we shoved aside some boxes whose contents we intend to donate to make room for the family minivan in the garage, next to my makeshift home gym I swear I’m using consistently. But there’s no room for my car.

We recently learned the lesson that it hails a lot here when we replaced both of our windshields two months ago. So, I drove to the nearest parking garage as a particularly eager storm marched its way across my weather radar app toward us. It happens to be attached to the local library. How convenient.

So here I am with less than 30 minutes before they close the building. It’s appropriate that a newsletter on fluency be so dependent upon the sanctuary of a library, as many things quietly are. It’s easier these days, with my children's deep fondness for books, to be aware of the role these ancient “data warehouses” (as my friend Nat said to me recently) have played in our lives. Tonight, the third floor provides refuge from a storm.

I wonder at how we relate to our individual knowledge, our story, in moments of uncertainty, of exposure to elemental forces. The comfort of our own library’s worth of experience brings a degree of surety, no matter how many shelves there are. We look for certainty here, tracing over the books in aisles we like to believe are known only to ourselves, secret treasures and tales. Some we relish, some we wish we could rid ourselves of, and others we aren’t yet ready to for—repeatedly pulled and left in the stacks.

For me, a crucial part of developing fluency requires practice with my own story. This usually involves retelling the little stories over and over again, to myself and with others, allowing for new aspects to come to the fore. Over time, I find myself noticing the smaller pieces. As I examine them, these totems, a more integrated awareness of the roles they played and the associated beliefs about myself emerge.

This can be very difficult to face.

Sudden shameful realizations might rush upon you. (Thanks, brains.) The body takes you back to those moments and without a toolkit for reminding yourself of your own present grounding, it’s easy to slip. Enter avoidance, medicating behaviors, and other ways of coping to soothe or attack the unpleasantness.

Alternatively, you might also be struck with the commingling of joyous grief in noticing a kindness shown to you that you were ignorant of, a deep sort of kindness that maturity and time reveals as such, yielding to gratitude. These are the golden moments where wisdom shows up and waters the soul. They can carry you through later days and articulations.

I know this post doesn’t have much to do with modern technology, but it has everything to do with how we embrace and avoid ourselves with story. How often do we find ourselves tempted to project our hopes upon the great amplifier, this truth surrogate, in order to tell us who we are?

It’s seductive. But it cannot love.

Fluency starts with guarding your heart, but looks more like curation.

I bet the librarian turning off the lights understands.

Time to go home.